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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25153408">100 Words of Fatal Frame</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/'>Anonymous</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Zero | Fatal Frame, Zero: Akai Chou | Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly, Zero: Shisei no Koe | Fatal Frame III: The Tormented</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 03:47:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,735</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25153408</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Short pieces written for 100 Words prompts on FFA.  Features some of the main characters, side characters, and ghosts.</p><p>9 fics for the first game, 4 for the second, 5 for the third, a few others.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Unofficial FFA Anon Collection</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Fatal Frame: Mirrors (pre-game)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Little girl sad, mama," Miku said, tugging at her sleeve.</p>
<p>"Is Chie outside?"  Miyuki glanced outside and didn't see anything, but perhaps the neighbor's daughter was on the other side.</p>
<p>Miku shook her head and pointed at the old mirror Masato's parents had given them.  "Little girl sad, mama."  Miku pulled at her sleeve and she followed her the short distance to the mirror.  She pointed at something in the mirror between their reflections.  Miyuki, puzzled and hoping this was only some odd childish fancy, took Miku's hand.</p>
<p>The shock thrummed through her like a ringing bell and her vision shifted, the way it had when she was a child.  There was a solemn, sad-eyed little girl with long black hair in the mirror, just behind Miku's reflection.  </p>
<p>The little girl reached out a pale hand to Miku.  "<i>Help me</i>."</p>
<p>Miyuki grabbed Miku and carried her out of the room, despite Miku's protests.  She went back, later, when she'd finally gotten Miku to nap.  The little girl had disappeared from the mirror, but she took it down and hid it away, hoping it would keep that spirit away.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Fatal Frame:  Mask (pre-Calamity)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The mask in his hands is cool to the touch, the expression enigmatic.  </p>
<p>He knows why his father chose his brother as heir.  Even then, he was as relieved to be free of the burden of ritual as he was furious over the loss of wealth and land and status.  He has only returned to this place, this house of death, once before.</p>
<p>His first act as head of the family was to preside over his brother's funeral.  His second should have been to marry his brother's widow.  His third must be to study and continue the rituals, to ensure that the priestess imprisoned in this house fulfills her duty, that there will be another, and another, and another.</p>
<p>He sets the mask in the altar and closes the door.  It is not yet time for this, this final act of acceptance.</p>
<p>On his brother's face, the mask became the face of a serene goddess.</p>
<p>He knows what it will become on his own.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Fatal Frame:  Rituals (pre-Calamity)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The family was in place, all the various descended-families in their allotted spaces, the living parents of past and present Rope Shrine Maidens in the place of honor in the center.  The Blinded Maiden stood in the center of the Demon Mouth, her face covered with blood from her ruined eyes;  she had made no effort to wipe her face on her sleeves, as the previous one had, and the effect was even more unpleasant.  The young girls were led down to the floor and placed in a circle around her, many already whimpering with fear at the sight.  The Maiden stood still as the children sang and shuffled around her, stood still even when the song ended and they scattered and ran.  The priest felt his heart sink, then rise when she turned swiftly, reaching for a child who ventured too close.  The child flung herself away and the Maiden chased her, staggering and stumbling, until another girl sobbed and she turned in that direction.  That child bolted away, the Maiden following, and another fell, shoving herself upright and fleeing when the Maiden turned her way.  Again and again the Maiden reached for them, and again and again they escaped, as the priest grew cold with fear.</p>
<p>A girl stumbled again, not quick enough to rise, and the Maiden seized her arm in a quick, fierce grip.  A woman above let out a low despairing cry, and the priest quickly stepped forward and brought the girl to the master's side.  She was quiet, even though tears poured down her face.  The current Maiden had kicked him in the shins, fighting until the previous master had taken her firmly by the shoulders.</p>
<p>The game picked up speed, as the Maiden caught two more in quick succession.  A few minutes passed, and another girl fell, perhaps deliberately, and didn't rise fast enough to avoid her.  A girl stumbled, then leaped away as the Maiden reached for her, barely avoiding the touch of her fingers, and another dropped to her knees so the Maiden's hands passed over her, crawling to the side.  The Maiden caught another, and another, the number of girls steadily falling, with faint sighs of relief as each was caught from the family above.  The girls grew clumsier, perhaps deliberately or from rising terror, and were caught faster and faster.  Blood and sweat ran down the Maiden's face to stain her kimono.</p>
<p>The third-to-last very nearly ran into the Maiden, the second-to-last tripped and fell, and the final girl fell gasping to her knees and was caught only heartbeats later.  A woman wailed in rage and horror above, the child herself almost paralyzed with terror as the priest led her to the master's side.  There was a disturbance above as her family seized her before she could charge the ladder to seize her child, and the priest recognized her:  a young widow, who had lost her husband last year, and whose ten-year-old son was leaning over the rails as if he meant to climb them.</p>
<p>The two younger priests brought the widow to the other parents of Rope Shrine Maidens, and the mothers closed around her.  The family master stamped his staff, declaring the ritual ended, and the family began to shuffle out, to return to the mansion above.  The next-youngest priest took the girls who had not been chosen out, and he took the arm of the Blinded Maiden to lead her away.  The master was last, bringing the chosen maidens.</p>
<p>The ritual was complete, and the priest prayed it was a good omen.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Fatal Frame:  Snow (pre-Calamity)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kirie watches the snow fall beyond the tiny, barred window.  The house is utterly silent, the gathered family in the Demon Mouth watching the Demon Tag ritual, and the soft hissing sound of snow is all there is.  The cold and the snow seep into her bones and her mind, slowly stilling and emptying her mind and her thoughts.  This is winter, this emptiness and silence:  she can almost feel herself dissolving into nothing.  She doesn't know if this is the surrendering of her attachments, but it numbs the guilt of that man's useless death.</p>
<p>It might last for hours, though the candles haven't burned down so far when the priests arrive.   They have a crying child with them, a child in the kimono she wore in this place at that age, and new ropes.  Untied, she stands stiffly, and wipes away the child's tears with her sleeves, gently smoothing the girl's black hair.  Kizuna did something similar, she remembers, when she came here, terrified and weeping.</p>
<p>The priests lead her away to the anteroom, so the child can be bound as she was, to begin her long isolation.  Sealed into the anteroom, the silence follows her into sleep, but has disappeared by the morning.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Fatal Frame:  Human Sacrifice (Strangling Ritual)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The sword would have been cleaner.</p>
<p>It was not, had never been, an option, and he turned the wheel steadily.  The priestess choked and gurgled, white kimono already stained with blood, her stretched body already raised slightly over the altar.  He turned the wheel as the ropes pulled ever more taut, the priestess's choking gasps more desperate.  </p>
<p>In the moment the priestess lost consciousness, her hands slack against the ropes, he heard a woman cry out in protest.  Only the priestess was allowed on this path to hell, and she had no voice left.  The priests did not react, as if they had heard nothing, and the cry was not repeated.  He continued to turn the wheel, as the priestess's limbs came entirely apart, arms torn loose from the shoulder and separated at the elbow, legs ripped away from the hips and torn apart at the knees, her head pulled away to lie precariously close to the edge of the altar.  Her wrists and ankles were scoured to the bone, her flesh and skin matted into the ropes along with her blood.</p>
<p>He knotted five ropes into one, and carried them to the gate.  The ropes of the previous priestess are worn thin, frayed where the great doors strained against them.  The doors shook once, in fear or anticipation, as he bound the new rope across them.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Fatal Frame:  Escape (Post/During Calamity)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Moonlight shines in through the barred window outside the cell.  Everything feels wrong, the air is thick and heavy, the mansion utterly silent, the buzz of voices that reached her even here is gone.</p>
<p>The ritual.  Kirie is — she's cried too much, her eyes are dry and burning, her throat raw.  She tugs uselessly at the ropes, her wrists already torn and bloody, the way Kirie's — </p>
<p>She stares at the patch of moonlight, trying not to think about the older girl, down there in the scary place beyond the Demon Mouth, the scary place she's supposed to go a long time from now.  The big round altar and the ropes, that's what she's heard when the grown-ups don't know she's listening, and Kirie's down there now and she's never coming back.</p>
<p>It's getting hard to breathe, something's wrong with the air, and she leans forward into the moonlight.  Bad things don't like light, they like shadows like the ones the candles make, and she crawls as far forward as the ropes will let her, the way she used to crawl into Mama's lap, hiding in the moonlight from the things in the shadows.  Big brother would tell her they weren't real, there aren't any monsters in the shadows, but the shadows aren't right and the air's all wrong.  </p>
<p>The mirror shatters, the noise is louder than thunder, it goes on and on.  She cringes in the moonlight, arms over her head, the air's still wrong and the shadows are worse, and the sound of the mirror gets mixed with people screaming.  The mirror stops breaking, the screaming stops, and the silence feels like a blow.  She sits up a little, trying not to cut herself, but the mirror's not broken, there's nothing to cut herself on.  There's a cloudy white shape in it, and she can't get away from it without leaving the patch of moonlight.</p>
<p>The world goes in and out, everything's strange, and sometimes she thinks there's a little girl in a kimono just like hers in the cell with her, trying to tell her something, and there's always the shape in the mirror.  A priest rushes in, gasping for breath, and opens the cell door.  He's forgotten his mask and his face is distorted by terror.</p>
<p>"Quickly, child," he says, untying the sacred ropes.  "Come quickly now."</p>
<p>She stumbles after him.  The world is still strange as she follows him through the other door, down the stairs and through the hall.  The little girl appears again, telling her to hurry, and she runs as fast as she can keep her balance on the boards in the fish room.  It's cold outside, a thin layer of snow on the ground, and the priest half-drags her along, he's moving so fast.  The door opens again behind them, and the priest looks back.</p>
<p>"Child, run!  Go to the woods.  Run!"</p>
<p>The other little girl is there again, taking her hand.  The gate is hanging open, and they run along the path, into the trees.  Somewhere the other little girl disappears and she keeps running, falling, running again, until the mansion is lost behind her.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Fatal Frame:  Madness (Post-Calamity)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For a brief moment, he thinks there are two small girls in white kimonos, running down the path to the Narukami Shrine.  But there is only one, vanishing around the bend, and the priest is standing in front of the path.</p>
<p>"Lord, you must not — No!"</p>
<p>The priest falls in a slash of his sword and dies with a swift sure stroke through the neck.  He collects the head from where it rolled and follows the path, out to the shrine.  The white kimono is disappearing in the distance between the trees, and the sacred ropes will not let him pass.</p>
<p>He returns to the mansion, where the last priest flees uselessly from his blade.  The mansion is silent now, but for his own footsteps, and the heads of the priests knocking together as he walks.  He places them with the others in the hearth room, and pauses to admire his work.  The priests sit on a shelf of their own.  Below them are the men, the elders lined up at the center, the youngest at the ends.  The women below them are arranged in the same fashion, and the children piled below them.</p>
<p>The empty space above the priests where the Rope Shrine Maiden's head should have been placed disturbs him.  The work is unfinished:  the Himuro have not all been punished for their failure.</p>
<p>He cannot reach her now, in the woods beyond the shrine, and he has failed again.  He returns to the great hall, to the family altar.</p>
<p>The blade feels like flame, not ice, as it tears through his flesh.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Fatal Frame: Past Catching Up with You (Yae)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Yae Munakata didn't remember her dreams before this house.</p>
<p>This house, that camera:  now her dreams crowd around her, demanding something she doesn't know how to give and might not even if she did.  Voices — a quiet one telling her not to look back, a loud one that demands, pleads, accuses — rise out of a hissing, whispering darkness with shadows she refuses to recognize.</p>
<p>The camera shows everything Ryozo wants to know, more than she wants to know, and she can't let it go.  She lights the candles in the burial room, and it shows her a terrified child trying to hide under the altar.  She lights the lanterns around the lake, and a badly-beaten boy pleads desperately for help.  She lights the lamp in the koto room, and she doesn't need the camera to see the girl kneeling at the instrument.  The song echoes, strange and sad, as the girl fades away.  She kneels at the koto, carefully plucking the strings.  There is a click and a grating noise from the doors behind her, and the one on the right has opened slightly.  It leads to a narrow passage, to the rafters over the room with the immense, damaged Buddhas, to a small door.  Beyond the door is a cell, a white shadow, and Yae hurries forward, searching, but there's nothing there and she doesn't know what she was looking for.  She steps inside and a woman is sobbing, heartbroken, the sound everywhere at once.  Something glitters in the alcove, a fragment of a mirror, its edges jagged.</p>
<p>Her fingers brush the rim and she jerks her hand back as if it's been burned, but it's too late.  She sees a mirror shatter, darkness engulf a shape in a white kimono, bodies fall at the sword of a man in a demon mask.  Blood, so much blood, and she staggers back, flees back across the rafters.  Ryozo finds her later in the koto room and puts her to bed, tells Mikoto to let her rest.  Her dreams are full of blood, a woman sobbing, a woman laughing.</p>
<p>When she gets up, she can see them without the camera: the woman with her eyes put out, the woman who jumped from the balcony, the man in the demon mask.  She walks through bodies in every room, sees the severed heads neatly arranged in the hearth room, hears that woman sobbing at night.  The badly-beaten boy cries 'save her' at the lake, and a monk drifts through the mansion screaming.  It's no surprise when Mikoto and her friends disappear, the ghosts' vengeance for their intrusion, <i>her</i> intrusion, and she cannot tell what blood is old or new.  </p>
<p>She finds the rope with Ryozo's repair supplies.  The moon is full and bright, a headless priest sprawls across the cairn, a trail of blood leads to the lake, and the man in the demon mask stands on the observatory, looking down at the woman who jumped.  The rope snaps taut and for some unmeasurable time she is only a body strangling in darkness, the roar of blood and pain consuming her awareness.  As the roar of blood fades, the darkness fills with hissing whispers, and she reaches out for a shape in a white kimono that is always just beyond her reach, until it fades and leaves her alone with the dark.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Fatal Frame: Ghosts (Night 2)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She can't find the last girl.  If she doesn't find the last girl, the ritual can't end.  If the ritual doesn't end, she'll never be free.</p>
<p>It's not a thought as much as a repeating, almost meaningless chant.  The emptiness where her eyes used to be burns and throbs, blood running endlessly down her face, and it's so dark, everything's dark.  She pauses, thinking of her mother's gentle hands on her face, cold compresses over her ruined eyes and burning skin, but the ritual isn't finished.  She must be imagining it, the way she imagined the blast of freezing, foul air with its whispering voices and the screams.  No one's here, the sound of crying girls and whispering adults is gone, she can't even hear the fire burning in the baskets.  She puts out her hands, searching for the rocks at the center.  </p>
<p>Wood creaks nearby, footsteps — the last girl.  It must be the last girl.  That there is no wood in the Demon Mouth confuses her briefly, but it must be the last girl, she's caught all the others.</p>
<p>Another creak.  She spins and reaches out, feels cloth slide between her fingers, hears a frightened cry.</p>
<p>It's the last girl.  When she catches the last girl, the ritual ends.  When the ritual ends, she's free.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Fatal Frame: Ghosts (ending)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Blood soaks his kimono, runs down his sword, spreads across the tatami.  This is as it should be. </p>
<p>The blood on the tatami is old and brown, fading.  He can see through his sword, his hands, himself.  That — is not.</p>
<p>He moves swiftly through the mansion.  The corpses are gone but their screams and their blood remain, their shadows moving around the edges of his vision.  He finds himself in the atrium, beneath the cherry tree, its branches bent with age and memories.  Flickers of red, shining in the dark — butterflies floating around a woman he does not know, hanging from the cherry tree — and the woman speaks a name and fades into darkness, the butterflies disappearing with her.  From Minakami, like the boy he ordered slain:  a sister, come to look for him?</p>
<p>It no longer matters.  He hesitates, remembering briefly the new Rope Shrine Maiden, a strange black box, a light against the Malice.  The ground shakes and rattles, and he can hear the great doors of the Hellmouth grind closed.  He does not know how, or why, but it is over.  He sheathes his sword as the shadows around him fade into light, reaches up and removes the mask from his face.  It remains the face of a demon in his hands for a few moments before becoming blank and empty-faced again.</p>
<p>He has come from darkness and through darkness, and will go into darkness again.  He lifts his face to the moon and fades into the light.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Fatal Frame 2: Human Sacrifice (pre-Repentance)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The shrine was closed up.</p>
<p>The Osaka family kept watch over the path from Misono Hill.  </p>
<p>The villagers kept watch over the cemetery and the fields.</p>
<p>The river, they agreed, was the only way out of the village.  They slipped out of their house in the dark, stolen keys clutched in their hands, terrified by the groaning noise the great door made when opened, ran through when it was barely open enough to pass through.  Crimson butterflies swarmed around them, trailed behind them in a great cloud as they ran for the river.  It was spring, the river in full spate with ice-melt, almost loud enough to drown out the shouts. They leapt off the downstream side of the bridge hand-in-hand, begging the water-spirits to take them out of the village before they died so their souls would not be trapped there.</p>
<p>Crimson butterflies followed them as the river pulled them away, drawing them under and pushing them up again, shaking with cold and coughing with the water in their lungs.  The butterflies went out like candles, and when the last one went out, the river pulled them under for the last time.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Fatal Frame 2: Darkness (Crimson Butterfly)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mio doesn't really mind the dark night sky, even with the clouds half-covering the moon.  The flashlight and the stone lanterns give out enough light that she doesn't trip, at least once her eyes adjust, and the shapes of trees and buildings are creepy but they make sense.</p>
<p>It's the other darkness that terrifies her, the darkness that the voices in crystals whisper about.  It curls through the village in tendrils and streamers, not at all like fog;  the smell, filthy and old,  sticks on her clothes, her hair, her skin, and it tastes like rotten fruit when she breathes through her mouth.  It's the sound of it that's the worst of all, mutters and whispers, sly, scared, angry or crazy.  If she listened just a little harder she'd understand what they were saying, and she doesn't want to know.</p>
<p>She stands at the top of the stairs at the shrine, trying not to listen as it coils around her like a snake.  Itsuki's gone, Mayu's gone, she's never been so tired, and she understands why those women jumped to their deaths rather than let it take them.  </p>
<p>The mutters have almost become words when she starts down the stairs after Mayu.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Fatal Frame 2: Twins (during/post-game)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It's late, moonlight shining through the window, and Shizu's feeding her twins, staring down at their tiny heads, still red and creased from birth.  She thinks through half-remembered old stories, that village that disappeared, the Shadow Festival that terrified her as a little girl until the babies are full and ready to sleep again.  </p>
<p>
  <i>Which of my daughters is going to die?</i>
</p>
<p>The thought sticks in her like a splinter, through that night and all the other nights, even as her daughters grow up and her husband disappears, even as she sells the house and moves far away.</p>
<p>The day she goes back to that place, just to see it again before the new reservoir drowns everything, she knows it's a mistake, that she should let the past lie.  It's not surprise that fells her when Mio and Mayu sneak off and don't come back, it's the anticipation of loss and grief, a heavy cold weight like she's drowning.  She can't tell Kei he'll only find one of them, and she can barely eat or sleep while she's waiting to see which of her daughters come back, the weight turning to aching pain and a racking cough.</p>
<p>Mio comes back filthy and voiceless, and she flinches away from Shizu's gaze as if she'd struck her.  It's a wall between them, worse than her illness and Mio's constant sleeping, and it never really goes away, not even when she's healthy and Mio's awake.  They rarely mention Mayu, or the mark on Mio's neck that's not a birthmark, and Shizu never asks what happened.  She thinks Kei knows, but she won't ask him either.</p>
<p>She didn't realize that she'd lose both her daughters when one of them died.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Fatal Frame 2: Groundhog Day (Itsuki)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He opens his eyes to darkness.  No one speaks to him — no one but Chitose has even tried since the ritual failed, not even their parents — but he hears them talking outside.  Sae's been found, alone, they've brought her back.  Yae will come back for her.  He's failed again.  Mutsuki will never forgive him now.  He finds the rope and kicks over the desk, falling into darkness with an agonizing crack.</p>
<p>He opens his eyes to darkness.  No one speaks to him — no one but Chitose has even tried since the ritual failed, not even their parents — but he hears them talking outside.  Sae's been found, alone, they've brought her back.  Yae will come back for her.  He's failed again.  Mutsuki will never forgive him now.  He finds the rope and kicks over the desk, falling into darkness with an agonizing crack.</p>
<p>He opens his eyes to butterflies inside his cell.  Yae's outside, there might be enough time to save them.  He tells her things she should already know, and the world starts to crack around him.  One moment the narrow window is open, the next rusted shut;  the kimono hanging on the lattice is clean and intact at one glance, filthy and half-rotted the next.  One moment Yae stands outside the window:  the next is a girl he doesn't know.   When it's Yae, the cell looks the way he thinks it should; when it's the other girl, the cell is old and falling apart, the desk on its side and a cut rope hanging from a beam.  He hears the villagers talk about Sae even as the girl he doesn't know pleads for his help, and he understands that it's too late, he's already failed.  Mutsuki will never forgive him now.  He reaches out to Yae, to  the stranger, even as he falls into the darkness.</p>
<p>He opens his eyes to butterflies inside his cell.  No one is outside and the door is open.  The village is full of butterflies and he understands, runs for home.  Chitose is hiding, and Mutsuki is waiting, and they are standing on the bridge between the houses when the rest of the butterflies erupt from Misono Hill.  They are standing there when the stranger runs beneath it, sobbing and calling a name he doesn't know.  He follows, Mutsuki and Chitose coming with him, and watches over her until the searchers come.  Only one of them can see him, just barely, but it's enough to lead him to her.</p>
<p>He opens his eyes to light.  He tells the stranger he's sorry, and she reaches out, her hand passing through him, a warmth he doesn't really deserve.  Mutsuki has forgiven him.  He fades into the light.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Fatal Frame 3: Hair Brushing (pre-Unleashing)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <i>You said you would come back.</i>
</p>
<p>She brushed her hair, the soft sound flowing into the rising and falling of waves that was all she had heard from the earring in years.  He had not called to her since — </p>
<p>Her hand paused, and her grip loosened, leaving the brush to dangle.  </p>
<p>
  <i>Kyouka!</i>
</p>
<p>He had called her, so clear and loud she had leapt up to search, certain he had come for her, and not found him.  Her mother had sharply reproved her, reminding her that it was spring  and of course there was no one there.  She continued brushing her hair, the hair he had so loved.</p>
<p>
  <i>You said you would come back.</i>
</p>
<p>Since then she had heard nothing but the waves.  He had told her tales of the ocean, an immensity of water stretching away to the horizon, a thousand shifting shades of blue, indigo and black with the white road of the moon at night, white-capped in heavy weather, promising to take her to see it for herself.   His story sounded like the way the Endless Sea had sounded, echoing faintly into the Abyss, when her mother had been teaching her to become the next master.</p>
<p>Her hand paused again, and the brush fell unnoticed to the ground.  The Endless Sea, the Horizon, the place where — </p>
<p>
  <i>You said you would come back.</i>
</p>
<p>She twisted up her hair and slashed it off with the knife, then carefully arranged the black strands before nailing them to the wall, where Akito could see and admire her hair when he came back for her.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Fatal Frame 3: Sleep (Hour X)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Rei sits on the edge of her bed, staring blankly at the floor, hands slack and limp in her lap.  She doesn't want to sleep:  she'll be in the manor again.  It might be her own dream, or she might be a passenger in Miku's or Kei's, unwilling voyeur to their pain and fear.  Miku's loneliness is deep and old, like a wound that never heals, her pain a mix of fresh and old, and it's easier to hear the ghosts when she walks in Miku's dreams.  Kei's fear for his niece is fresh and growing stronger, his grief for Yuu now that she's told him about his death almost too much for Rei to bear, and she can feel him thinking about Mafuyu when he discovers the house of ropes, a complex tangle of grief and confusion and even anger.</p>
<p>She wants to sleep:  maybe this time she'll find an answer to this mystery, a way to make it all stop.  Reika doesn't want this dream any more either.  Rei's not sure why she thinks that, why her terror is mingled inextricably with pity.  </p>
<p>She wants to sleep:  maybe this time she'll find Yuu, tell him everything she never did.  </p>
<p>Rei lies down and closes her eyes, sleep pulling her down quickly and fiercely.</p>
<p>Maybe this time she won't wake up at all.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Fatal Frame 3: Choices (Hour X)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Rope Altar is soaked with fresh blood.  The smell should be sickening, overwhelming, but she's dreaming:  the smell flows around her in eddies and currents, unpleasant but survivable.  Miku wonders who Kizuna was, if she was really a Rope Maiden or if the house created her from Miku's memories.  There would have been no body, no blood, for her grieving family to bring to the Kuze Shrine decades before Reika, even if the Himuro, or the Kuze themselves, would have allowed such a thing.</p>
<p>She traces her fingers over the scars on her wrists that she can't see;  the sacred ropes weigh on her arms and legs, dragging behind her when she takes a step toward the door to the gate.  </p>
<p>Mafuyu is at that gate.  If she goes there again, she'll stay there forever, with Mafuyu and Kirie.  If that's where the door leads. This dream-place has no connection to the Himuro at all:  it could go back to that place beyond the engraving shrine, or nowhere at all.  She might become a hostile spirit in someone else's dream like that girl under the floor, trapped here as hopelessly as any spirit in Himuro Mansion.</p>
<p>If she goes through that gate, she'll leave Rei for a dead man the way Mafuyu left her for a dead woman.  The way her mother's obsession with the camera and spirits took her away.  The way her father's obsession with digging up a long-dead past took him away, the way Munakata's obsession with the past took him and Yae from Grandmother Mikoto.</p>
<p>She could see Mafuyu again.  She could hear his voice, his laugh.  She can tell him she didn't want to leave him behind, that she wanted to stay with him, be with him.  But it can't be like it was.   Nothing can be the way it was.  They'll both be dead, supporting Kirie in her effort to keep that gate closed.  There will never be anything else.</p>
<p>She'll leave Rei just like everyone else left her, chasing after the dead.</p>
<p>She stands there, wavering, she doesn't know how long.  She wants to see Mafuyu again, tell him she's sorry, she shouldn't have lived on instead of him, without him.  She wants to see Rei again, to meet Kei, to find some way out of this terrible dream.</p>
<p>Miku turns away from the door to the gate, the ropes pulling toward the altar.  She opens the door back into the mansion and walks away.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Fatal Frame 3: Atonement (Sea of Endless Night)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mio didn't know how she'd come to this dark beach, but there was something calming about the steady washing of the waves and the immensity of the water, the streams of paper lanterns flowing out into the darkness to become faint pinpoints of light.  She stood ankle-deep in the water, the sound seeming to wash away her pain, her guilt, the emptiness Mayu had left behind.  Maybe she could float away with the lanterns and stay forever.</p>
<p>She made one step forward, then another, kept moving until the water was up to her thighs, the snakes in her tattoos seeming to swim.</p>
<p>“Don’t.”</p>
<p>Between one blink and the next, a white-haired boy stood before her.  “Mio.  Please don’t go.”</p>
<p>“Itsuki?”  She reached out and he took her hands; his hands were cool and strong, not misty or faint as she’d been expecting.  A dark-haired boy — Mutsuki — and Chitose in her red kimono were reflected in the water, but not visible above it.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry.  I couldn’t save you and your sister.”</p>
<p>Yae had run away.  Their father had hung Sae, who had gone mad and refused to let go of her dream of Yae.  Sae had destroyed the village and taken over Mayu.  “It wasn’t your fault.”  Itsuki had tried to save them, even if he thought they were Sae and Yae.  “We almost made it out.”</p>
<p>“Sae wouldn’t go,” he said sadly.  “I, I didn’t know, didn’t think she wanted —”</p>
<p>Yae wanted to live out their separate lives together.  Sae wanted to be one with Yae.  “Yae didn’t either.”  Maybe Yae didn’t want to know that their desires were completely opposite.  Maybe she hadn’t wanted to know that about Mayu.  “Itsuki, I — I can’t —”</p>
<p>“I know.”  His voice was quiet, almost lost among the waves.  “I couldn’t.  But I — I would have been nothing more than a Remaining whose ritual failed, all my life.”</p>
<p>“I’ll always be a Remaining.”</p>
<p>“Yes.  But you don’t have to be only that.  You’ll be free of the village.”</p>
<p>“Mio!”  Uncle Kei?  Why would Uncle Kei be in this place?  She turned her head, afraid Itsuki would disappear, but his hands still held hers tightly.</p>
<p>Uncle Kei was wading through the water toward her.  For a moment, she thought she saw figures behind him, but they faded into the darkness if they’d ever been there.  Uncle Kei didn’t, water sloshing around him as he struggled through it.  “Mio!  Mio, please!”  He sounded scared, almost frantic.</p>
<p>She wavered.  The darkness and the endless waves were calming, peaceful;  she thought she could listen to them forever.  But Uncle Kei was reaching out for her, struggling through the water.  “How can I — after I — Mayu —”  She looked down.   Mayu’s image was in the water next to her,  just behind, though she knew she wouldn’t see her if she looked, and Mayu raised a hand to point to Uncle Kei.</p>
<p>“I couldn’t answer that for myself.” His grip on her hands was almost painful.  “Mio, please.  I can’t — I don’t want to watch anyone else die.  You deserve to live.”</p>
<p>She turned her head to look at Uncle Kei again, and then slowly withdrew one of her hands from Itsuki’s to reach out.  As she did, the tattoo began to move, flowing from her body to Itsuki’s.   Uncle Kei seized her hand and she felt something flow between the three of them, like an electric shock.  Itsuki released her hand, her tattoo almost covering his face, and smiled.</p>
<p>“Goodbye, Mio.  Thank you.”</p>
<p>He was gone before she could ask why he was thanking her.  She waded back to shore with Uncle Kei, who told her he’d tell her everything, how he’d gotten there, once she woke up.  The beach dissolved into light, and she was blinking up at the bright lights of the hospital, and trying to sit up.  Someone called out in surprise and she was surrounded by nurses, then doctors.  Uncle Kei arrived hours later; she flung herself into his arms and cried.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Fatal Frame 3: Photos (post-game)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Miku carefully hung the last of this batch of prints to dry.  </p>
<p>She didn't know why she was developing all the film she'd used in Himuro Mansion.  None of them looked like her mother's pictures, or her great-grandmother's, with their blurred, indistinct shapes that could almost have been damaged film, or like the vague forms of light and shadow in the book of western ghost photography she'd seen at the library.  These were partly transparent and clearly human — or once human — forms, faces recognizable.</p>
<p>The blinded woman, with blood from her ruined eyes staining her face.  Junsei Takamine, at the mirror before the room with the Buddhas.  The woman with the broken neck, her head hanging backwards.  Great-grandfather Ryozo, on his way to the study.  His face was tired and worn, but kind;  he'd told her not to be afraid even while he attacked her, crying out about his wife and daughter.  Perhaps the piece of holy mirror he'd been holding had given him that much awareness.  She didn't think it would have been a blessing.  Great-grandmother Yae, who looked so like her mother, with shadows like butterflies around her.  The man who'd stretched his arms climbing out of hell, reaching out for her.</p>
<p>The family master's face could not be seen.  One of the photos showed him in front of a door, the one that led to the part of the house with the giant shrine and the damaged Buddha statues, just turning to look at something.  Another showed him in the great hall, sword raised to kill her.</p>
<p>Mafuyu with his back to her, wandering through the path to the underground place where the Demon Tag ritual had been carried out.</p>
<p>The last photo was of the window to the confinement room, with the little girl in the white kimono, Kirie's younger self, staring out.  Miku wondered what she'd been thinking about, whether she'd missed her family, whether she'd ever really reconciled herself to the ritual.</p>
<p>At the end, at the edge of that great dark sea, when Mafuyu had taken the tattoos from her, she'd seen Kirie again, a pale shape, small against the immense doors.  Mafuyu had told her no one else would remember him, or the people who died in the mansion, or Kirie herself.</p>
<p>Kirie had told her to live.  </p>
<p>She hadn't said remember me, or help me.  She'd said live, something sad and desperate in her voice, and Miku would never know if it was for everything Kirie hadn't had or for the hope of seeing one person escape her curse.</p>
<p>She decided to mat and frame that picture, and place it with the other family photographs.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Post-Series:  Scars</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Reika had gone to the other side, and none of them really remembered what the tattoos had looked like, or how they'd felt;  Miku had drawn them once she'd woken, but even then the memory had been fading.</p>
<p>Sae had become a butterfly, in the lake where that village had been, and Mio bore her mark.</p>
<p>Kirie hung on that gate, and Miku carried the ropes.</p>
<p>It wasn't something she liked to talk about, even with Rei or Kei, but even though they couldn't be seen, the scars from the rope curse had never gone away.  In winter she could feel the ropes themselves, rough hemp as thick as her wrists, almost equally rough shide hanging off it, both fading into nothing as her hand traced down them.</p>
<p>It wasn't the sort of thing Kirie could have simply taken back, that Mafuyu could have taken from her the way he'd taken the tattoos.  It was in some part memory, her own and Kirie's, of that place, that cell, the altar, overlapping so much that she couldn't have said which part came from which of them.</p>
<p>She couldn't have taken Kirie's place:  she was, then and now, far too attached to this world.  Instead she bore the scars, the memory, as her own way of supporting Kirie on the gate.</p>
<p>Miku stood in the snow and looked up at the moon as the ropes tightened and pulled, not-quite-phantom pain tearing through her body.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0021"><h2>21. Cameras (Fatal Frame and Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service Crossover)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Context: Rei and Miku are doing a joint photography exhibition and a display of Dr. Asou's devices with Kei. Sasayama got them to hire the Kurosagi crew to move everything to Shinjuku.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The shinshoku spirit following Karatsu seemed to be fascinated by Dr. Asou's radios, studying them closely and occasionally tentatively reaching out to touch one.  They emitted bursts of static every time, the static refining into something like voices the longer the spirit was near them.  Miku had never seen anything quite like it, and it made her a little nervous;  Dr.  Asou's devices tended to have unexpected effects in the presence of spirits.  Even spirits who weren't hostile.</p>
<p>The last of the radios were placed in the cases, and Numata opened the first case with the cameras.  The spirit eyed the cameras warily, stepping away from the crate.  Karatsu picked up Ruka's camera and it rattled in his hands, sounding almost indignant, shaking hard enough he nearly dropped it.  Kei caught it and set it quickly in the display case, facing Karatsu and his ghost;  there was a burst of light, the shutter clicked, and the camera whirred as if it was advancing film.  The spirit folded its arms and glared at the camera.  The camera Numata was holding, Misaki's, rattled briefly as well and was silent;  he quickly set it in the case, giving it a suspicious look.</p>
<p>Miku quickly borrowed Karatsu to help set up the photography exhibition.  Ruka's camera rattled once and was still once the spirit followed him away.  She didn't hear any more static from the radios while he worked with Yata, and the spirit seemed content to stay close to Karatsu, occasionally looking at the photographs.  Most ghosts weren't very aware of or interested in the living world, much less inclined to interact with it.  After everything was done, they went back to Kei to be paid and arrange to come back and break down after the exhibition.  Ruka and Misaki's cameras rattled again as the spirit passed them, and the radios let out bursts of noise, almost refined into voices.  The spirit looked up at the portrait of Dr. Asou, around the room at the devices, and then back at the portrait in exasperation and recognition.  Perhaps he'd met him while he was alive.</p>
<p>She impulsively offered them five tickets — Sasayama had told them the two women ran the office-end of the moving operation — and Numata cheerfully accepted them.  One of the cameras, the one Kei thought had belonged to Akito Kashiwagi, clicked twice as they left, film advancing, and the spirit glared at it.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0022"><h2>22. AU:  State-Mandated Ghost Hunting Partnership (Yuu and Mafuyu)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/270432.html?thread=1520885856#cmt1520885856 - based on this prompt</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Yuu fell on the stairs and slid down, his right leg twisting painfully and unnaturally.  The scythe went clattering down ahead of him, skittering  just below him.  He came to a stop, breathless and aching all over.  The noise — the bells, the screaming, that heavy creaking noise — was gone.</p><p>"Mafuyu, are you — Mafuyu?"</p><p>No answer.  He pushed himself to a sitting position and looked around.  He was alone.  Yuu reached down and grabbed his scythe;  the usual soft glow, like moonlight on snow, was gone, the metal dull and stained, the handle cracked.  He couldn't put weight on his leg and crawled back up the stairs, dragging himself step by step.  He heard crows calling, despite the hour, a distant rumble of thunder, and nothing from inside the mansion.  There was a wind, a force, a sound — none of those, exactly — pushing him back, until he fell again and was shoved back down the stairs.</p><p>The bound ghost in the hearth room, the useless scythe, Mafuyu's camera chasing it away.  The rope hallway, the woman in the mirror, the bells, the screaming.  He'd bashed the door to the entrance open with the scythe, tried to drag Mafuyu with him — and then he was outside, falling down the stairs.  He'd left Mafuyu behind.</p><p>He crawled slowly down the stairs, to the bridge.  He found a branch sturdy enough for a cane and limped to the car.  Kei might think — Kei would never forgive him.  <i>Miku</i> would never forgive him.  He climbed into the car and stared blankly at his dead scythe, then at the road, and began the long drive home.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0023"><h2>23. Canon Divergence (Mafuyu)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mafuyu's car was parked at the house.  Nobody'd answered the phone in days and Miku apparently hadn't even been to school at all.  Yuu knocked until Mafuyu opened the door, haggard and pale, eyes red.</p>
<p>"You look like hell," Yuu said, when Mafuyu silently stepped aside to let him in.  There was no sign of Miku in the living room, and her school bag wasn't there, though her coat was.  "Where have you been?  I've been trying to call you for days and the school wants to know where Miku is."  He'd let Mafuyu put him down as an emergency contact, since there really wasn't anyone else.  "Where <i>is</i> Miku?"</p>
<p>Mafuyu staggered back as if Yuu'd hit him, almost falling into a chair at the table.  "I, I —"</p>
<p>"What happened?"</p>
<p>"I ran away."</p>
<p>"Ran away — I thought you were going to look for Takamine.  <i>Where's Miku?</i>"</p>
<p>Instead, Mafuyu said Takamine was dead, something about a house and spirits, wandered back to say Ogata and Hirasaka were dead too, and then about the house again.  He could be drunk or high, though he didn't smell like alcohol, and Yuu decided to get some water and food into him in an attempt to get him coherent enough to answer the question.  It didn't work all that well:  he figured out that Mafuyu had gone to an abandoned house to look for Takamine and taken Miku with him.  If he'd left her there — Yuu left Mafuyu sitting at the table, staring at the empty tray of the frozen meal, and called Kei.  He found a sheet of paper marked up with Mafuyu's idea of directions, arranged to meet Kei, and left.</p>
<p>It took them a few hours to find the house.  There were two cars pulled off the road in front, Takamine and Ogata's, and a long, curving path up.  Inside, the place was surprisingly intact, with some scattered footprints in the dust and a lot of antiques and old books.  What there wasn't was any sign of Miku, or anyone else;  the ashes in the fireplace had been disturbed, a screen had been moved from in front of a door, and there were fresh scratches on a lock.  Baffled, they headed back to the rope hallway to leave.</p>
<p>A school bag was propped up against the mirror.  It hadn't been there when they came in, and it was covered with rock dust.  Yuu knelt down to check it out:  it was full of ancient film, a tape recorder and tapes, schoolbooks, and notes in Miku's neat handwriting.  He looked up at the mirror and scrabbled back, startled:  it didn't show the rope hallway, but a set of great carved doors, illuminated faintly by moonlight, a faint white shape, almost human, hanging in front of them, a second white shape on the ground before them.  He blinked and the doors were gone, replaced by the rope hallway.</p>
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